'The Walking Dead' Season 7 Ratings Drop Hard for Episode 2

Did you do it? Did you really stop watching "The Walking Dead" after the Season 7 premiere? TWD is still the biggest thing on TV, so most fans did not stop watching. However, for any number of potential reasons, the October 30 Episode 2 dropped about 27 percent from the Season 7 premiere. You missed Shiva the tiger!

The Season 7 premiere earned close to the highest numbers ever, with 17.03 million viewers and an 8.4 rating in the 18-49 demo. Episode 2 fell hard from that, to 12.46 million viewers and a 6.1 rating. But compared to everyone else, that's still great. And, as Variety noted, most second episodes see drop-offs in the lower double-digits, and TWD's demo rating still beats every other scripted TV series. No one at AMC is going to ugly cry.

Still, this is a larger-than-usual dip for "The Walking Dead." As TV By the Numbers reported:

"That's about twice as big a decline from the premiere to Episode 2 as in recent seasons. The second episodes of Seasons 4, 5 and 6 declined by about 14 percent on average. The episode after the record-setting Season 5 debut declined by by 11.5 percent in adults 18-49."

The most-watched episode of TWD to date is still the Season 5 premiere, which had 17.29 million viewers and an 8.7 rating. It fell in Episode 2 as well, but only to 15.14 million and a 7.7 rating.

It's possible some fans felt the Kingdom-set Episode 2 was not must-watch enough to see "live," and chose instead to watch the World Series or "Sunday Night Football." They may catch up this week through DVR, On Demand, etc. Episode 3 takes us back to Daryl Dixon's predicament, so we'll have to see if more TWD fans tune in to watch that on Sunday, November 6, or if we did really lose a lot more family members than just Glenn and Abraham.